Nightmare Egg
by NormanWhitesmith
Summary: After Luigi gets hit by a spell from Antasma, Mario is holding Luigi's life in his hands and finds what Luigi's truly afraid of. One shot. Sorry about the horrible title, but I couldn't think of anything else as i wrote this.


_Norman Whitesmith here bringing you a small one-shot while I work on the rest of my stories. As per usual, please review and leave some constructive criticism so I can do better writing in the future. Without further ado, here's Nightmare Egg._

Nightmare Egg

Mario stared at the dark sphere in his hand. It was roughly the size of a softball and was cold to the touch. But this wasn't a softball, but rather something more important. The sphere seemed to emanate darkness and evil and inside the transparent outer shell of the thing, you could see the darkness flowing around the inside, appearing much like mud swirling around in water. But that wasn't what was most important about it. It contained a life of someone dear inside it. Mario watched as the darkness curled around a small unconscious form inside the sphere, the figure seemingly weightless and floating inside, sleeping in a seemingly eternal restless sleep. The figure twisted with discomfort as the darkness tried to force its way inside his chest. Inside the sphere was Luigi, trapped and unconscious, helpless as the darkness tried to penetrate him and make his worst nightmares form around him. Mario literally held the life of his brother, his only remaining living family, in his hand. Mario watched in horror as Luigi seemingly lost the fight and jerked a little as the darkness entered him.

XxX

This started when Antasma returned from what seemed to be his defeat and moved to the Mushroom Kingdom to start his reign of terror there due to the lack of a Zeekeeper to protect them. Screams of terror could be heard from everywhere as Antasma sent his bat minions out to destroy things and cause unrest. But Antasma's mistake was that he forgot that this kingdom had the Mario Bros. to take care of business. Only about two hours after he came and started his attack, the bat king was face to face with the two who were responsible for his last defeat: Mario and Luigi. Mario looked on in strong confidence, ready to fight, while Luigi looked more along the lines of trying not to soil himself. The fight of the centuries began as Antasma had bided his time wisely in the darkest recesses of the dream world and made himself stronger. But Mario and Luigi were also stronger as rescuing kidnapped princesses on a bi-weekly basis kind of did that.

The fighting was amazing on both parts as hammers flew, darkness beams were shot, and mushrooms were eaten. But in the end, it was the two to one advantage that the Mario brothers held that lead them to the final blow on Antasma that won over him once and for all. But both brothers got the surprise of their life when Antasma stood one final time with his battered body and gave his final speech.

"You may have won the battle, but I have the final word," Antasma chuckled weakly before firing off a beam with the last of his power.

The beam was shot without warning and sped at Mario without giving him time to react other than to cover his eyes with his arms and hope it didn't hurt too bad. A flash of darkness suddenly washed over Mario and he opened his eyes to see what the beam was doing to him. Mario stared in horror when he saw it was Luigi in front of him. Luigi had leapt in front of the beam to save Mario, taking the full on force of its power instead of Mario. Even though it was only a few seconds, it felt like an eternity for Mario as he watched Luigi manage to twitch his head to give a sad look at Mario and mouth "I love you" before his eyes were forced to snap shut as the darkness surrounded him. Mario watched in strange fascination as Luigi's body within the darkness was suddenly outlined by light and began to shrink. A feeling of helplessness overcame Mario when Luigi reached his final size, which was slightly smaller than a water bottle, and the darkness seemed to form a sphere around him and solidify.

As soon as Luigi was trapped inside the orb, the sun, which had been covered by ominous dark clouds, broke through the clouds and began to shine again. The citizens rejoiced as the bats seemingly disappeared and everything was alright. Alright for everyone but Mario, that is. Mario quickly picked up the sphere, tears blurring his vision, and looked at his little brother (no pun intended) floating inside. Mario had always tried hard throughout his life to keep Luigi safe and save him whenever he needed it. Everyone called Luigi a coward and mocked him and demoralized him beyond belief, but in the end it was Mario who needed saving and Luigi bravely stepped up to the plate without as much of a thought for his own well being.

Prince Dreambert rushed over as fast as possible for a pillow and looked on sadly at the sphere and admitted that he had never seen anything like it before and that it had never happened before. He promptly gave Mario instructions to not break it open, as nobody knew what would happen, and to keep it safe. Dreambert rushed off quickly to see if he could find as much of an inkling to solve this. Mario couldn't bring himself to sleep the following night, as he felt it would be wrong to just put his little brother on the nightstand and sleep as if nothing had happened. Instead Mario clutched the orb close and stared at Luigi, floating helplessly through what could only be described as what nightmares are made of.

XxX

Mario watched in panic as more darkness flowed through Luigi and Luigi went oddly limp. Although before it seemed as if he would twitch and move slightly, now he seemed slack as if all life left him. Suddenly, darkness started flowing out of Luigi's head, projecting scenes of non-existent scenarios. Mario realized that they were all Luigi's fears as he watched some of the tiny scenes play out in the palm of his hand. The scenes seemed to be starting with small basic fears that just about everybody had, from public speaking to showing up to school without pants, but Mario gasped in horror as the intensity of the fears started to increase and started to get into what Luigi was absolutely terrified of. Mario watched as ghosts surrounded Luigi in one scene, but was quickly drawn away when he saw that at the end of the trail of what seemed to be movies, the scenes were reforming into what seemed to be bats that were moving over to Luigi and latching onto his neck and other parts of his body and began sucking his blood. Mario watched helplessly as Luigi slowly went pale from blood-loss, still unconscious and helpless to fight back.

Mario got another jolt of panic when he noticed the transparent shell around the orb started to lose its transparency and the shell began to darken. Luigi looked as white as a sheet inside and noticed how the darkness flowing into his chest seemed to be dwindling. All at once the last of the pure darkness shoved itself into Luigi's chest in one heave and Mario watched what appeared to be Luigi's worst fear play out on display for him to see. Confusion washed over Mario's face as he saw Luigi dressed in a black suit and crying on a very grey afternoon where the clouds were sobbing with him. Befuddlement disintegrated as Mario got the full view of what was happening as the perspective expanded and he saw a tombstone. With his name on it. Mario's heart twisted and he felt a sick to his stomach. However much this was hurting him, Mario forced himself to watch more. Luigi began to speak, but without sound, and Mario put his lip reading to the test.

"I'm sorry Mario," Luigi began, "I failed you. I couldn't protect you. I am a bad brother. I didn't save you."

The scene finished playing out, leaving Mario sobbing and fruitlessly yelling "I am here, Luigi! Look, I'm here!"

Mario didn't even notice the shell was continuing to get darker until it was almost impossible to see through and he was barely able to see the last nightmare burst into a bat that far outmatched the others in size and the shell lost its transparency completely as the bat began to slowly advance towards Luigi's chest, ready to land the killing blow. It was at that moment that it all clicked for Mario. This was an egg. Antasma was made of pure nightmares and was unable to stay alive, so he was creating a successor by turning them into pure nightmares by having their fears feed off of them. Luigi wasn't going to survive much longer and Mario knew it. He had to disobey Dreambert and open the egg, no matter the consequences, as Luigi was more important. Mario squeezed the egg in his hand and felt a little give. He had to open it carefully as to not crush Luigi.

Mario slowly crushed the edges of the egg open, and almost was flung back by the darkness coming out of the holes with such intensity, but relaxed when the darkness stopped pouring out all at once. The shell of the egg was slowly picked away and carefully, leaving only the doll-sized Luigi in the palm of Mario's hand. He wasn't moving. Mario acted fast and tried to bring Luigi back and make his heart beat again by trying CPR with his index finger on Luigi's chest, but it was no use. Luigi still refused to respond. Mario felt more tears spill over and splatter on Luigi, feeling hopeless that he failed his only family. Mario lightly rubbed Luigi's hair with his finger and picked up Luigi's tiny hat that had fallen onto the floor and put it on him.

"Congratulations, little bro," Mario choked out, "You were the true hero. Better than me even. I'll make sure that people know who the hero was."

One more tear fell onto Luigi's chest and Mario put his index finger on Luigi and closed his eyes tightly, hoping he would open them and that it would all be a bad dream and that Luigi would rush over to him and hug him and ask what's wrong, eager to make it better. But this was his reality that he would never see his brother again. His green mug in the kitchen would always remain empty, collecting dust since the days that it was once used daily. His chair in the house, painfully empty, never to be used again. And most of all, he'd never see Luigi's unique smiles ever again, he'd never hear the laughter, and he'd never feel the presence of the little brother that never stopped believing in him, even when the odds were against him and everyone else had given up on him.

Mario paused as he felt something squeezing back on his index finger and instantly opened his eyes to see Luigi weakly holding on to his index finger. Luigi began to cough up a rancid looking black goop and opened his eyes, squinting from the bright light.

"What happened?" Luigi asked groggily, "I had the most horrible dream that I had lost you."

"Luigi," Mario started, "You saved me."

 _How did I do? If I made you cry, please let me know in a review. That whole "rubbing it in" part didn't exist where is was describing Luigi's absence until I started thinking about my grandfather who had died last August and those were pretty much the thoughts I had while walking through his house, looking at his urn, the places that he had inhabited just days earlier, but would never be used again. I sure as heck was crying while writing that part. All in all, I hope you liked this one shot. It was inspired by the ideas going through my mind while playing dream team and watching Luigi getting ripped out of Mario and trapped in a nightmare orb type thing. What was going on in there? So that's what spawned this story. I hope you liked it, and leave a review if it made you cry, so I can tell if I'm the only mentally unstable person here that will cry from this. I have nothing else to say, so until next demented story, Norm out. And don't forget, losing someone you love is one of the most horrifying experiences you could ever live through. And it's even worse when you know a bunch of elderly people._


End file.
